Shaman builds
Talent Trees By Purpose Solo PvE Enhancement The most common leveling talent tree is that of the Enhancement Shaman. Blue posts on the Blizzard Forums even state that this is the designers intent. It is very mana efficient and therefore suffers from the least downtime while dealing high amounts of damage. This is key against mobs. Elemental This talent tree can also be chosen for leveling. Some even perfer it over Enhancement. At lower levels, down time can be a problem. Once Mana shield is learned, however, there is hardly any down time. Restoration These builds aren't a good choice for leveling due to the low damage output. Although survivabilty becomes very high, battles will be drawn put and down time will be a big issue due to high mana costs. Group PvE Restoration Sometimes the most wanted, and most favored in a group. Because healers can be a hard find, a Resto Shaman can be substituted for any healing class. There are talents that increase healing, along with reduced mana costs, Resto Shaman can keep a party alive for a long battle. Due to the total of 4 possible totems out on the field to buff the party, any talent based Shaman is highly favored, since there are plenty of totems that serve for all classes in WOW. That is, melee attackers, mana users, and healers. Enhancement This talent tree can easily out DPS Restoration, but comes to a close tie with Elemental. With low mana costs and high damage output, Enhancement Shaman can serve as a strong DPS choice in any group. Along with damage reducing talents, a well geared Enhancement Shaman can be an off tank for a group with low armored clothies. Elemental This talent tree is also a high damage out put tree that outperforms Restoration in DPS, but is really close with Enhancement. Elemental falls short to Enhancement for one main reason. Mana Efficency. At low levels, Down time can be horrid, causing DPS to slip. At higher levels, this can no longer become a problem. But because this is a mana based talent tree, mana can disappear fast. PvP Enhancement It uses very little mana and the talents allow for more damage, mana efficency, and reduced damage. Ehnacement Shaman can take out any cloth class if they get the first hit in. Melee attacks are key against low armored classes, while spells and range are more typical against strong melee classes. Elemental Also very good in Battlegrounds, when u have range. Being a caster makes it harder to survive against strong melee classes. With high damage output at the cost of mana, this talent tree can survive a few good battles with distance. Once an enemy gets within range (or out of range), then there are very small options that are available to survive. Spells are the main damage output here, putting melee damage very weak. Restoration At higher levels, this is a favorite. Although horribly weak in damage output, Resto Shaman have a much easier time to survive when they have an abundunt amount of mana. But when the mana bar is drained, there is very little a Resto Shaman can do. With a strong melee class paired up with the Resto Shaman, there is very little they can do as a team. Elemental The talents at 11, 21, 31 and 41 points really stand out in this tree, they are among the best available to a shaman. The in-between talents are less attractive, the other trees are more balanced in this respect. It's also difficult to spend more than 41 points in this tree in an efficient way. Group/Raid A basic method to spend 41 points in elemental would be like this. There are 5 points which can be considered "free", those in Unrelenting Storm. Leaving them there is good for a raiding/grouping build where the shaman expects not to draw aggro, but needs more mana for long boss fights. Talents like Eye of the Storm and Storm Reach are more geared towards PvP or solo play. It's also possible to put one last point in Reverberation for playstyles where the shocks (and not Lightning Bolts) are the primary nukes (PvP). Usually the remaining 20 points are put in Resto, in order to get another 5% crit chance for lightning bolts. This leads to an interesting problem: Healing Focus (uninterruptible heals), Totemic Mastery (totem range) and Tidal Mastery (5% lightning crits) would need a total of 11 points, but there are only 10 available. There are three possible solutions: #not increase the totem range (good when soloing) #take only 4% lightning crit increase (compromise) #not put any points in uninterruptible heals (good when raiding) A good raiding build would be this 41/0/20. Natures Guidance (3% spell and melee hit) should be used to balance gear. A total of +16% spell hit is needed vs. lvl. 73 bosses. An elemental shaman always has at least +9% spell hit from Totem of Wrath and Elemental Precision. There's a lot of epic elemental gear with more +spell hit (namely the Tier 4 items), so it's a good idea to start out with three points in Natures Guidance, and divert the point somewhere else later on, when gear with +hit becomes available. PvP In the Elemental tree, there is one key talent for enhanced PvP survivability: Eye of the Storm, which prevents loss of cast time after a crit (and note this procs even if the enemy crit doesn't really take effect because of Elemental Shields or Resilience). OTOH, increased mana regeneration, enhanced lightning range, redcued aggro and increased hit chance all are rather uninteresting in PvP. Also Natures Swiftness (from the Restoration tree) is extremely more useful than 3% crit chance, as are uninterruptible heals. These considerations lead to 40/0/21, which maintains very high DPS. Lightning Overload is a rather lucky affair, so 37/0/24 sacrifices a few more DPS for still higher survivability. Solo PvE/Levelling Prior to level 40 or so, Elemental isn't a very good choice as main tree. With 31 talent points though, Storm Reach and Lightning Mastery are both available and thus it becomes possible to kill mobs before they arrive in melee range (the extended range and reduced cast time allow up to three Lightning Bolts and one Shock). 31/0/0 has all these talents, and also a little mana regen plus Elemental Mastery. Enhancement A shaman going for the highest possible damage output should take a serious look at enhancement. Dual wielding increases damage output by about 10% (compared to an equivalent 2H), offers greater versatility, and one more useful stat (melee to hit chance). Leveling When choosing an Enhancement build to level, the general theory is to rely on physical damage as much as possible and to use mana mainly to heal in between fights. This way, mana can regen during fights for virtually no down time. The only damage spells used are Lighting shield, Stormstrike and very rarely a shock. When starting a new character, the first priority should be to get 31 points in Enhancement (for Stormstrike). After this some choose to go straight to 41, getting Dual Wield along the way (0/41/0), while others prefer to get 3% melee hit, less interruptible heals and maybe Nature's Swiftness from the Resto tree before returning to the Enhancement tree (0/31/21). Group PvE / Raiding In a group environment a shaman should not expect to get hit and thus avoid talents like Anticipation, Toughness (which is not recommended in any case) or Improved Lightning Shield, and instead put the points in improved melee totems. The most important melee totem is Windfury Totem. Although it's of no use for the Shaman himself (because the weapon buff is superior), it's simply the best buff a warrior or rogue can get, thus Improved Weapon Totems is mandatory for any group build. 0/42/19 is an example for this type of build, spending the remaining points in Resto. 3% to hit, Healing Focus and increased totem range are very useful additions. It's also possible to complement Enhancement with Elemental, leading to 19/42/0, with a problem: Mental Quickness is missing. It would be a great talent for this type of build, but there simply are not enough talent points. One point could be taken from Improved Weapon Totems, but reducing the points in Weapon Mastery won't really increase damage output, thus it's a tradeoff between Mental Quickness and Elemental Devastation. Solo PvE / PvP For PvP, Enhancement is probably the worst shaman build. Shamans are rather susceptible to CC, and have a hard time to snare their opponents in return. It's hard to get into melee range, and the days of nearly instant WF proc kills are over. Still, there are enhancement doing PvP with quite some success (player skill > all in PvP anyways). In PvP, the group talents and the two top enhancement talents (Shamanistic Rage and Unleashed Rage) are of minor importance, compared to the highly useful talents which can be obtained in the other trees. In Resto, Natures Swiftness is highly desirable, so here's an Enhancement/Resto build 0/37/24 tweaked for PvP. As in PvE, something like 23/38/0 is possible, dealing very high amounts of damage (again with the Mental Quickness/Elemental Devastation tradeoff, albeit at a higher level). Enhancement/Elemental PvP builds can rely on spell damage even more, e.g. 25/36/0 does away with dualwield and uses a 2H for high damage crits, and 1h+shield for endurance fights versus melee classes. 23/38/0 is about the same, however, it will help slow down running prey a little better, and offer more defense. It sacrifices the fire totems to do it, but then again... how much damage do they do compared to just a single additional melee hit? Restoration There was a time when endgame PvE shamans were mandatorily full resto. Mana Tide Totem was just the single best talent shamans had, so there was no real choice. Nowadays, the resto tree offers still some of the best talents for a raiding shaman, but also has some options appealing to players interested in PvP or solo PvE. The landmark talents are enhanced totem range at 11 points, Nature's Swiftness (which is one of the very best talents overall) at 21 points, Mana Tide at 31 and Earth Shield at 41 points. The restoration tree offers so many extremely good talents that a build with only 41 points already lacks at least one them. PvE The following resto talents are all desirable in PvE: *Improved Chain Heal *18% increased effect on HW *5% increased crit chance on heals, together with an AC buff on crit heals *70% uninterruptible heals If only 41 points are to be spent in resto, at least two of these talents will miss (an example would be 0/0/41). A build with all of them (0/0/53) will leave only 8 points for other purposes. Usually players will go for some compromise like 0/5/42 or 0/0/48. PvP In PvP, Mana Tide isn't really important, neither is Healing Grace. Thus a minimal PvP resto build would look like 0/0/41. Nature's Guardian makes a shaman rather hard to kill. Hybrid Builds In 5 man PvE (and to a lesser extent in 10 man too) it's sometimes useful to have group members who can perform more than one role. Feral Druids are the most prominent example, but Shamans also have helped to avoid many wipes because they timely switched to backup healing. Sometimes (particularly prior to lvl ), Shamans can even act as emergency tank, but in general hybrid builds usually put more emphasis on the healing role. Spell DPS/Healer The most frequently seen Shaman hybrid build is Elemental/Resto. It has the big advantage that the same type of gear has useful stats for both roles, whereas other hybrids suffer from the problem that gear only rarely has useful stats for two different roles. A balanced Elemental/Restoration build like 31/0/30 will be a rather good backup healer even while wearing full DPS gear. Enhancement/Restoration This 0/31/30 is a enhance/resto hybrid. The damage output is around 80% of a full Enhancement build and the healing abilities are quite decent too. It's possible to main heal in just about any situation as well as do very good damage. The build conserves mana for healing, while melee damage is done basically for free. Jack of All Trades An attempt to turn a shaman into a multi-purpose healer/damage dealer/tank is this 11/29/21. It lacks all of the higher talents, and will not deliver top performance in any single role. In return, it achieves some balance between dealing damage, survivability and healing. The general idea would be to deal "free" melee DPS, while saving mana for either healing or to go all out with shocks. This build will be very hard to gear up. Links Extensive Talent Guide Category:Guides Category:Shamans Category:Talents Category:Shaman Talents